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This week, i Capital features Shanghai Conant Optical Co., Ltd (Shanghai Conant), a leading manufacturer of resin spectacle lens in China. The Company’s resin spectacle business can be traced back to 1996, the year Mr. FEI Zhengxiang founded QiTian Technology (旗天科技), which was listed on ChiNext (创业板) of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010.

QiTian Technology began offering value-added services for bank cards in 2018 and spin off the resin spectacle business to Mr. FEI. In 2021, the Company was listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. 

According to market intelligence provider Frost & Sullivan, Shanghai Conant was the largest resin spectacle lens manufacturer by production volume in China in 2020, scoring an 8.5% market share. It also became the largest spectacle lens exporter by value with a market share of 7.3%. Shanghai Conant ranked No.9 globally in 2020 among resin spectacle lens manufacturers and is the only one headquartered in China. Conant has two production sites in China and one in Japan, its capacity totalling 180 mln pieces of lens per year. As of end 2024, the Company had 2,723 employees in China, Japan, the United States, and Mexico.

Business model

Resin lens accounts for over 95% of the global eyewear market thanks to its light weight and greater impact resistance compared with glass lens (remaining 5% market share).

In a nutshell, Conant takes orders from customers and sources raw materials such as resin monomers to manufacture lens according to various requirements. The Company’s revenue can be categorised into standardised and customised lens (19.2% of total revenue); the former can be further broken down into traditional standardised lens (3